56 The Inexhaustible Resource of Technology 



tive discussion which outhnes the future decline in the rate of dis- 

 covery and production. But his predictions are a far cry from those 

 of twenty or more years ago, which appraised our total future supply 

 as significantly less than the production that has been made since 

 then, let alone the even larger proven reserves that are presently 

 known. 



The older reserve estimates have been completely invalidated by 

 the great strides that have been made through the use of geology, geo- 

 physics, and engineering in finding and extracting petroleum from the 

 ground. The various types of stratigraphic traps in Texas and the 

 Mid-Continent Region, the reservoirs adjacent to the salt domes of 

 the Gulf Coastal Plain and the Continental Shelf, and those bordering 

 the ancient reefs of Texas, the Williston Basin of North Dakota and 

 western Canada have added to our primary reserves and are the result 

 of the increased capacity of the petroleum geologist to predict, and 

 find, concentrations of oil and gas in environments that were poorly 

 understood not too many years ago. Our known reserves have been 

 further enlarged by the increased yield from known fields due to the 

 work of the petroleum engineer on secondary recovery methods and 

 on induced fracturing in the reservoir rocks. 



And we can view the possibility of exhaustion of even these re- 

 serves with some equanimity in the light of our research-derived 

 capacity to produce synthetic liquid fuels from the tremendously large 

 reserves of oil shales, tar sands, and, in the still more distant future, 

 low-grade coals. 



Progress in increasing our resource base for the metallic and non- 

 metallic mineral resources has lagged behind that for petroleum, 

 largely because demand for these commodities did not increase as fast 

 as did demand for petroleum products after adoption of the internal 

 combustion engine. But there is considerable evidence that support 

 of research on the origin of these deposits and into the means of ex- 

 ploring for them is increasing both in industry and in government, 

 and is beginning to bear fruit. 



We are at the moment unfortunately more concerned with selling 

 and utihzing the products of our copper, our lead-zinc, and our tung- 

 sten mines than in finding additional sources to bring into production, 

 but recent years have seen the discovery of new and significant de- 



